Twinfamy

In addition to classes, a significant portion of my work as a student involves conducting research, and I’m thrilled to report that I recently learned two academic papers I co-authored and submitted to highly-regarded conferences were both accepted and will thus be published. Having never submitted to anything of this caliber, I’m floored to be batting 1.000, and as hard as I work to keep my world spinning, it’s a nice little payoff. I’m convinced the scales were tipped in my favor due to my inclusion of the very same bow-wearing stick figures, pop culture references, and fecal humor you’ve come to expect from this fine publication.

While I have been explicitly forbidden by a gaggle of ninjas to disclose the details of these two strokes of genius before they are published, I will share a new research effort I’ve spearheaded, which involves public transportation. You see, one of the hippest new buzz words in the academic community is “sustainability”–a term I’m convinced some prolific professor coined while drunkenly slurring his words together at a snooty dinner party and that now everyone pretends to know the meaning of. Anyway, I figure if I put “sustainability” in the title, NPR listeners will flock to it like birds who flock to things that birds like, so it’s probably a good career move.

With that in mind, I decided to investigate whatever sustainability is in public transportation, dutifully sitting on countless local buses for hours at a time, trying to top my Angry Birds high score. However, between demolishing those menacing green pig heads with no bodies, I actually came up with some pretty fascinating findings, which I will now share with you all.

The following phenomena were observed on every single bus I rode, occurring constantly, all through the town in which I was travelling:

• Wheels on the buses going round and round;
• Windshield wipers going “swish, swish, swish”;
• Bus drivers alerting passengers to “Move on back”;
• People going up and down (assumedly from potholes and street hippos);
• Bus horns going “beep, beep, beep”;
• Babies crying, inflected in a pattern that sounded like a sort of “Wah, wah, wah”; and
• In response, parents requesting the aforementioned babies to “Shh, shh, shh!”

Again, it is important to note that all of the above happened all through the town.

These groundbreaking findings provide irrefutable evidence of something about whatever sustainability is, and should not be taken lightly.

You’re welcome, Science.

I’ll try to act surprised by a Nobel Prize nomination.

You may also enjoy:

If not, perhaps you’ll find some of my other posts more sustainable.